Meet the Jerpmans
Jul. 1st, 2006 11:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusA couple of weeks ago I was sitting in a cafe called Kauf Dich Glucklich ("buy yourself happy") -- a cafe, Japanese friends of mine say, whose friendly, tasteful, relaxing style could as easily fit into Daikanyama or Harajuku as Prenzlauer Berg. I was reading Exberliner, the English-language magazine, when I came across this sentence:
Like the cafe, this description rang a bell. A national obsession with saving? And not just saving, but saving at ridiculously low interest rates? The other nation known for this odd behaviour is, of course, Japan. I scribbled a note in my notebook which started a collection: a list of all the parallels between German and Japanese ways of doing things.
The theme is in the air in Berlin right now, with the big Berlin Tokyo show on at the Neue Nationalgalerie. But there really does seem to be some kind of clustering of attitudes; it's almost as if an amalgamated cultural group exists, a blend of Germans and Japanese we could call "the Jerpmans". The control group in this cultural experiment will be the UK and the US, since those are the societies I know best, and since they tend to differ from Jerpmanian traits and habits on almost every point. I'll call them the Anglos. Let's look a bit closer.
Saving in low-interest accounts: Some need for stability and security leads both the Jerpmans to build up big savings in accounts which yield 2% interest or less. The Anglos prefer much higher rates of interest if they're saving, but tend to be in debt all the time, running up big borrowing on credit cards and overdrafts. Such "casino-style living" worries the Jerpmans, although there's some evidence they're beginning to adopt Anglo ways (saving less, spending more). In Freudian terms, the Jerpmans would be seen as "hoarders", late anal types obsessed with order and control, rather reluctant to let go and spend. (It's interesting, then, that the cafe I was sitting in when I read about their hoarding habit was called "spend yourself happy".)
Lawsuits: Anglos are much more likely to sue than Jerpmans. Again, this seems partly to be an aversion to speculative behaviour. Sueing is a rather "casino-like" behaviour. The stakes (in terms of legal costs and social conflict) are high, but if you win you can break the bank with a multi-million dollar payout. Nevertheless, Jerpmans would not be impressed by the 1-800-I-CAN-SUE adverts you see in New York. I'm personally Jerpman on this issue: I never thought of sueing when I lost the use of an eye through a contact lens problem, and I would never demand money if someone sampled a record of mine, just as Konishi didn't when he heard my Pizzicato 5 samples in "Enlightenment". Sueing is a slippery slope to a society where everything is owned, everything has a financial value, and where people are at each other's throats for money the whole time.
Cleanliness: Jerpmans are notably obsessed with cleanliness. Berlin and Tokyo are much tidier and cleaner than London or New York. Toilets tend to be tolerable, non-stinky. Cleanliness is a moral virtue here. It can be hell moving out of an apartment in Berlin, because you have to leave it in a pristine, sterile and impersonal condition (I tried repainting my kitchen twice before leaving my Karl Marx Allee apartment -- the agency didn't accept the standard, and kept my security deposit to pay a professional to do the job). In contrast, rented accommodation in London often comes furnished, eccentric and dirty. And, obviously related, is this:
Taking shoes off in houses: The Jerpmans take off their shoes when they enter a house or a restaurant. The Anglos don't. In fact, Anglos will often sit with their shoed feet up on the upholstered seat of a subway train, despite signs telling them not to. It's no wonder that upholstered British trains often have a cheesy smell. What's more, cowboys and Irish labourers stereotypically wear their boots in bed.
Nakedness: The Jerpmans are often seen as uptight, but in many ways they're less hung up than the Anglos. Nakedness, for example. In Germany and Japan public nakedness has a long tradition (mixed public bathing, for instance, or summercamp callisthenics). The German band Faust famously recorded naked, and I'm sure The Boredoms have done the same thing (Morning Musume record semi-naked). It's hard to imagine Radiohead stripping, although I'm sure it would improve their music. On this issue, I'm Jerpman: at least one Momus record has been recorded naked, "Folktronic".
Drinking and smoking: Here too the Jerpmans are way less uptight than the Anglos. In Tokyo you can buy beer out of streetside dispensing machines. In Berlin everyone walks around with a beer bottle in their hand. These are also big smoking cities, where you can smoke just about anywhere. In New York and London, smoking and drinking are strictly controlled. Incidentally, this relates to the sueing issue. The trend against smoking in the UK comes from US lawsuits against Big Tobacco. I wonder if British people would accept such radical curbs on their civil liberties as readily if, instead of American lawsuits, the UK smoking ban came from an EU health directive? What would the headlines be saying then, eh? "Puff one for Britain!" "Blow smoke in their eyes!"
Stealing: Germany and Japan are both more equitable societies than Britain and the US: the Gini rating is lower here. People are less inclined to see others doing much better than them (partly because extremes of wealth and poverty are hidden in these societies), less inclined to feel a sense of relative deprivation that entitles them to compensatory crime ("redistributive crime", we could call it). One test of this is what I call "the bike test". I like to buy a cheap bike and leave it unlocked, because I hate fiddling with locks. I've done this in Japan, and I'm currently doing it in Germany. I've never had a bike stolen in either of these countries. In Britain, despite locking my bike, I've had two stolen. In New York I left a Razor scooter unattended for ten minutes and it was gone.
Tipping: The relative lack of unease Anglos feel with inequality is expressed in tipping practises. In the UK and especially the US, you tip people in service industries. In Germany and Japan, you tend not to. It feels (and I speak as a happy non-tipper) patronizing. It also induces anxiety: Why are there all these hidden charges? Why can't the employer pay his employees properly? Am I able to calculate the exact tip I should leave? Are these people just being nice to me so that I leave a fat tip?
Pedestrian crossings: Jerpmans stand like sheep, waiting for the red man to go green. On this issue I'm strongly Anglo: I charge across the road at my own discretion, looking left and right and judging when it's safe. What I don't take into account, though, is that I'm endangering other people: sometimes, in Jerpmania, people see someone crossing and assume the light has switched to "WALK". They then get hit by a car.
Trees and nature: I often think the Jerpman soul is rooted in a forest. The fairy and folk tales of Germany and Japan are full of stories that take place deep in the woods, and Jerpman cities are pervaded by greenery, gardening allotments and window boxes. The percentage of Japan covered in forest is something like 65% -- in Britain it's dwindled to a pathetic 11%. As a result, the British people have lost their soul. There are no tengu-type souvenirs in Britain, and Robin Hood is largely forgotten.
Fascism, Atrocity, Guilt: Okay, let's deal with it down here. Germany and Japan were both fascist countries in the mid-20th century, and both committed atrocities. As a result, Jerpmania is characterized by a notable, all-pervasive guilt. This guilt, I believe, is what makes these societies, today, remarkably civilized, liberal and pacifist. Atrocity and fascism, today, are much more likely to happen in Anglo societies. Look at Britain's omni-surveillance, reminiscent of the STASI. Look at the Iraq invasion, American torture camps, extra-judicial internments. These things happen, I believe, because Anglos, having won the last major World War (thanks, partly, to an atrocity of their own: the use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations), are insufficiently guilty. Guilt, my friends, is good, and guilty countries are good countries. Fingers crossed that Jerpmania doesn't win the World Cup.
(Images on this page are of the work of Layla Curtis, who takes bits of maps of one place and transforms them into maps of another.)
Like the cafe, this description rang a bell. A national obsession with saving? And not just saving, but saving at ridiculously low interest rates? The other nation known for this odd behaviour is, of course, Japan. I scribbled a note in my notebook which started a collection: a list of all the parallels between German and Japanese ways of doing things.
The theme is in the air in Berlin right now, with the big Berlin Tokyo show on at the Neue Nationalgalerie. But there really does seem to be some kind of clustering of attitudes; it's almost as if an amalgamated cultural group exists, a blend of Germans and Japanese we could call "the Jerpmans". The control group in this cultural experiment will be the UK and the US, since those are the societies I know best, and since they tend to differ from Jerpmanian traits and habits on almost every point. I'll call them the Anglos. Let's look a bit closer.Saving in low-interest accounts: Some need for stability and security leads both the Jerpmans to build up big savings in accounts which yield 2% interest or less. The Anglos prefer much higher rates of interest if they're saving, but tend to be in debt all the time, running up big borrowing on credit cards and overdrafts. Such "casino-style living" worries the Jerpmans, although there's some evidence they're beginning to adopt Anglo ways (saving less, spending more). In Freudian terms, the Jerpmans would be seen as "hoarders", late anal types obsessed with order and control, rather reluctant to let go and spend. (It's interesting, then, that the cafe I was sitting in when I read about their hoarding habit was called "spend yourself happy".)
Lawsuits: Anglos are much more likely to sue than Jerpmans. Again, this seems partly to be an aversion to speculative behaviour. Sueing is a rather "casino-like" behaviour. The stakes (in terms of legal costs and social conflict) are high, but if you win you can break the bank with a multi-million dollar payout. Nevertheless, Jerpmans would not be impressed by the 1-800-I-CAN-SUE adverts you see in New York. I'm personally Jerpman on this issue: I never thought of sueing when I lost the use of an eye through a contact lens problem, and I would never demand money if someone sampled a record of mine, just as Konishi didn't when he heard my Pizzicato 5 samples in "Enlightenment". Sueing is a slippery slope to a society where everything is owned, everything has a financial value, and where people are at each other's throats for money the whole time.Cleanliness: Jerpmans are notably obsessed with cleanliness. Berlin and Tokyo are much tidier and cleaner than London or New York. Toilets tend to be tolerable, non-stinky. Cleanliness is a moral virtue here. It can be hell moving out of an apartment in Berlin, because you have to leave it in a pristine, sterile and impersonal condition (I tried repainting my kitchen twice before leaving my Karl Marx Allee apartment -- the agency didn't accept the standard, and kept my security deposit to pay a professional to do the job). In contrast, rented accommodation in London often comes furnished, eccentric and dirty. And, obviously related, is this:
Taking shoes off in houses: The Jerpmans take off their shoes when they enter a house or a restaurant. The Anglos don't. In fact, Anglos will often sit with their shoed feet up on the upholstered seat of a subway train, despite signs telling them not to. It's no wonder that upholstered British trains often have a cheesy smell. What's more, cowboys and Irish labourers stereotypically wear their boots in bed.
Nakedness: The Jerpmans are often seen as uptight, but in many ways they're less hung up than the Anglos. Nakedness, for example. In Germany and Japan public nakedness has a long tradition (mixed public bathing, for instance, or summercamp callisthenics). The German band Faust famously recorded naked, and I'm sure The Boredoms have done the same thing (Morning Musume record semi-naked). It's hard to imagine Radiohead stripping, although I'm sure it would improve their music. On this issue, I'm Jerpman: at least one Momus record has been recorded naked, "Folktronic".
Drinking and smoking: Here too the Jerpmans are way less uptight than the Anglos. In Tokyo you can buy beer out of streetside dispensing machines. In Berlin everyone walks around with a beer bottle in their hand. These are also big smoking cities, where you can smoke just about anywhere. In New York and London, smoking and drinking are strictly controlled. Incidentally, this relates to the sueing issue. The trend against smoking in the UK comes from US lawsuits against Big Tobacco. I wonder if British people would accept such radical curbs on their civil liberties as readily if, instead of American lawsuits, the UK smoking ban came from an EU health directive? What would the headlines be saying then, eh? "Puff one for Britain!" "Blow smoke in their eyes!"Stealing: Germany and Japan are both more equitable societies than Britain and the US: the Gini rating is lower here. People are less inclined to see others doing much better than them (partly because extremes of wealth and poverty are hidden in these societies), less inclined to feel a sense of relative deprivation that entitles them to compensatory crime ("redistributive crime", we could call it). One test of this is what I call "the bike test". I like to buy a cheap bike and leave it unlocked, because I hate fiddling with locks. I've done this in Japan, and I'm currently doing it in Germany. I've never had a bike stolen in either of these countries. In Britain, despite locking my bike, I've had two stolen. In New York I left a Razor scooter unattended for ten minutes and it was gone.
Tipping: The relative lack of unease Anglos feel with inequality is expressed in tipping practises. In the UK and especially the US, you tip people in service industries. In Germany and Japan, you tend not to. It feels (and I speak as a happy non-tipper) patronizing. It also induces anxiety: Why are there all these hidden charges? Why can't the employer pay his employees properly? Am I able to calculate the exact tip I should leave? Are these people just being nice to me so that I leave a fat tip?
Pedestrian crossings: Jerpmans stand like sheep, waiting for the red man to go green. On this issue I'm strongly Anglo: I charge across the road at my own discretion, looking left and right and judging when it's safe. What I don't take into account, though, is that I'm endangering other people: sometimes, in Jerpmania, people see someone crossing and assume the light has switched to "WALK". They then get hit by a car.
Trees and nature: I often think the Jerpman soul is rooted in a forest. The fairy and folk tales of Germany and Japan are full of stories that take place deep in the woods, and Jerpman cities are pervaded by greenery, gardening allotments and window boxes. The percentage of Japan covered in forest is something like 65% -- in Britain it's dwindled to a pathetic 11%. As a result, the British people have lost their soul. There are no tengu-type souvenirs in Britain, and Robin Hood is largely forgotten.
Fascism, Atrocity, Guilt: Okay, let's deal with it down here. Germany and Japan were both fascist countries in the mid-20th century, and both committed atrocities. As a result, Jerpmania is characterized by a notable, all-pervasive guilt. This guilt, I believe, is what makes these societies, today, remarkably civilized, liberal and pacifist. Atrocity and fascism, today, are much more likely to happen in Anglo societies. Look at Britain's omni-surveillance, reminiscent of the STASI. Look at the Iraq invasion, American torture camps, extra-judicial internments. These things happen, I believe, because Anglos, having won the last major World War (thanks, partly, to an atrocity of their own: the use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations), are insufficiently guilty. Guilt, my friends, is good, and guilty countries are good countries. Fingers crossed that Jerpmania doesn't win the World Cup.
(Images on this page are of the work of Layla Curtis, who takes bits of maps of one place and transforms them into maps of another.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
gerpmanese? jerpmanermans?
Date: 2006-07-01 09:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 09:49 am (UTC)Having completed a rather grueling Tokyo apartment search, I was quite surprised to find that the cleanliness doesn't always extend to older apartments. They tend to really let the older buildings go. Planned obsolescence....
Its great to think that Japan is 65% forested...all those unbuildable mountains might have saved it from itself. But does that include the Sugi-Forests planted by the government and the bane of many Tokyoite's allergies?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 09:58 am (UTC)I personally like this sense of constant openness and change. Berlin seems to say "I'm not finished, like Paris is. I don't quite know who I am, and I need you to help me find out."
I personally also like Tokyo's relentless modernity, despite mourning some of my favourite spots when they vanish, and loving what old wooden buildings remain. I'd rather have experimental new architecture than a museum, much as I love Venice, for example.
More thoughts about the forest issue here (http://imomus.livejournal.com/129545.html).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 10:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 10:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 10:18 am (UTC)"Anglo-Saxon countries—America, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand—have the lowest rates of household saving. Americans on average, save less than 1% of their after-tax income today compared with 7% at the beginning of the 1990s. In Australia and New Zealand personal saving rates are negative as people borrow to consume more than they earn. Other countries with rapidly greying populations—especially Japan and Italy—have also seen their personal saving rates plummet, though from a higher level. The Japanese today save 5% of their household income, compared with 15% in the early 1990s. A few rich countries, notably France and Germany, have bucked the trend away from thrift. Germans saved around 11% of their after-tax income in 2004, up slightly from the mid-1980s."
So maybe, in savings terms, the Germans are "the new Japanese"! Remarkably different, anyway, from the Anglos.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 10:19 am (UTC)der.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 11:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 11:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 12:13 pm (UTC)I think that it is insulting to the level of intelligence omnipresent in the German/Japanese people to think that they'd throw caution to the wind and be unable to compartmentalize societal priorities due to a sports victory.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 12:15 pm (UTC)Perhaps it is because that people raised in the East under communism still cannot quite wrap their minds around real work, as a culture...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 12:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 12:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 12:51 pm (UTC)MM recording. Fags.
Date: 2006-07-01 12:54 pm (UTC)You're dead right about smoking. The English (and the Scottish, which is astonishing!) have really rolled over on this one. Why couldn't the EU have come out with it first? Damn Damn!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 01:01 pm (UTC)I also generally appreciate smoking bans. I was subjected to my father's second-hand smoke for 18 years and I'd rather not have to inhale any more poisonous fumes. I don't want to get lung cancer at the age of 50!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 01:29 pm (UTC)There's much more a sense of victimhood rather than guilt, or shame for that matter, over the "Great Pacific War". Perhaps a consequence of the terrible extent to which nearly all of Japan was bombed at the end of the war. But the general lack of a sense of responsibility for involvement in the war is very unfortunate in terms of relations with the mainland, esp. China.
Re: How does the Jerpman theory explain the relentless popularity of Elvis?
Date: 2006-07-01 01:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 01:52 pm (UTC)Stealing is also true. In my old high school, you could not leave anything out, if it had any real value outside of the school building. This included your graphic calculator that was needed for parabolas and physics. You could report an item being stolen but the chances of anything being recovered was nil, the administrators too busy administrating.
I have always questioned the reasoning behind the tip system. It never made sense to me, that if you worked at a place that qualified as a restaurant, you would be payed less than minimum wage ($5.15/hr) because the employers are expecting you to live off the tips of customers instead of your hourly wage (my mom just informed me that there is in fact a law that has restaurants paying you less, with the automatic assumption that you'd make more tipping). Here in Ohio, not tipping at all is considered quite rude and offensive. Even if the waiter/waitress is bad on a particular evening, you still give them some kind of tip if you care about how people think of you. However, the idea behind tipping is incredibly open with holes - people tip with plenty of other things in mind besides the actual service of said waiter/waitress, i.e. how nice they were, if they were attractive at all, if the food was any good, etc. Personally, I'm glad when it's never up to me to pay the bill, and therefore decide how much to tip.
And as for more trees = more soul, I think you're mistaken. There's plenty of soullessness in my town, when we have the Cleveland Metroparks System taking up at least a third of this suburb. Though you can attribute said soullessness to the fact we live in the United States (and a Midwest state besides), where having a soul is looked down upon.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 01:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 01:57 pm (UTC)and yes they so are.
i'm finnish and am a complete jerpman for most of the cases. the pedestrian crossing in particular worries me some. i might be moving to italy ánd am so afraid i'll get hit by a car in an instant.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 02:14 pm (UTC)i'm finnish and living in london. everyday i don't get hit by a car is some kind of miracle.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 02:14 pm (UTC)Boaktronic!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-01 02:32 pm (UTC)that and the relative amount of forest correspond well with those of japan.